


Umbrae

by micehell



Category: Firefly
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Post-Serenity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-01
Updated: 2007-05-01
Packaged: 2017-11-12 02:39:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/485754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/micehell/pseuds/micehell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zoë flits in like a ghost, because part of her is dead, and the rest of her isn't quite sure it doesn't want to be</p>
            </blockquote>





	Umbrae

Zoë flits in like a ghost, because part of her is dead, and the rest of her isn't quite sure it doesn't want to be. She almost wants to hate Mal for holding her back, for dividing her in half this way, but she's far too long in the habit of following him, of loving him, to quite pull it off. But even though she loves him, it isn't quite enough to make her _want_ to stay.

She circles the cockpit, a thousand bad jokes about the name running through her head, all in one voice. It hurts still, hearing it, hurts far more not to. She's terrified of losing it altogether, of time stealing even more of him away. There are recordings, though: logs, a diary, songs he'd sung -- badly -- to serenade her in the beginning. In the middle and end, too.

It's an old song she plays now, from centuries long passed into dust. She's heard the original, the singer's voice thin and spare with need, haunting. Wash's voice is rougher, more nasal, but she is thin and spare with need, and no less haunted.

Zoë touches the tiny dinosaurs that someone set back on the console after it had been fixed; their fierce plastic faces standing guard over the dark controls. She touches the navigation wheel that Wash had fought with so hard, that he'd mastered. She touches her face, her neck, her breasts, trying to find traces of him in the things that used to be his to touch, but it's just plastic and steel, just flesh like stone.

The pilot's chair is sitting there, dark and still, like it's trying to avoid her eye, but she can't ignore it. Kaylee long since wiped away the last traces of Wash from the chair, and Mal's been in it since, but it still belongs to Wash in Zoë's mind. It probably always will.

Mal would let her avoid the cockpit if she wanted, would let her pretend it wasn't there. But she'd be throwing away years of good memories with the moments of horror, and she can't let Wash go that easily. Zoë hesitates before she sits in the chair, but Serenity Valley had taught her how to live side by side with the dead, and one of the things Wash had always loved about her was her strength. She's just faking it now, for his memory if not herself, but she's good at that, too.

The chair feels like it always had, the back curved round to support the pilot's, the straps, unfastened, swinging idly behind her. It's familiar, a place she's been many times, always welcomed. She remembers the things they used to do in this chair, that Mal always claimed would blind him when he would walk in unawares. Jayne would just watch, ignoring Wash's complaints, but finally leaving when Zoë reminded him that Mal would space him on her say so. She was pretty sure he'd still listened, sometimes, from further up the hall, but she'd never told Wash, and she'd never really minded. They were her crew, after all, all part of _Serenity_ , all part of her.

The memory of those times is a low beat deep inside her, like a flicker of flame, and she wants it back, wants him back, with everything she has. She wants his heat and his touch and his love, and she can't stand this cold any longer, can't stand to be here, between living and dead.

When Zoë rests her legs up on the console, feet long used to avoiding the controls even as she spreads her thighs wide, she's trembling. It's partly the chill she can't seem to shake, even as the memory of arousal, the feel of it, burns through her. Partly it's the things she's determinedly not thinking about. But some of it's muscle memory, her skin pimpling as she draws her skirt slowly up her legs, letting the cloth, letting her hands slide over flesh that used to quiver under other hands, under a tongue, under a dick that used to press so deep inside. There's only her fingers now, but that's familiar here, too, and she can picture Wash sitting between her widespread legs, watching her as she did this. She can hear his voice, even though the recording's stopped, telling her where to touch herself next, and the memory's strong, his voice still clear, still there, in her mind, and she follows his directions gratefully.

It's just there, just there, he tells her, and her fingers feel good as they dip into her folds, already grown damp with need. Then it's lower, harder, over the peak of that tiny mountain that shifts under her touch, that throbs under it. He loves her fingers, so long, the nails blunt, and he likes to watch as she pushes them in, one, two, three, until they're thick and hard and deep, making him moan, making her moan, making her come, laid bare and open by her hand and his memory.

Afterwards, for a moment, Zoë really can't remember what happened, only has pleasure to keep her company. But eventually she has to move, has to pull her skirt back down, the warmth fleeing before it.

She knows grief, has met it many times before, so she knows that eventually the world will grow warmer again, that pleasure will be shared with something besides ghosts. If she chooses to let it. It will only take time… and work, and pain, and living when all she really wants to do is to lie down and never get up again. In moments like this, when all that's before her is the past, she wonders if it's worth it.

But then she catches a glimpse out of the corner of her eye, just a blur that's gone too fast for identification, and she almost smiles, knowing, with something deeper than Book's faith, that it'll be worth it someday. Because the blur wasn't Wash, wasn't any of her ghosts. And it doesn't matter if it was Mal, traumatized again, or Jayne, anything but, because, like Wash -- and Book, and the soldiers in Serenity Valley, and her parents lost long ago -- they still belong to her. Death doesn't change that.

Zoë walks out of the cockpit like a human, because only part of her is dead, and she intends to keep it that way.

/story


End file.
